Page 49

She was now farther into the mountains than she’d ever gone. There were no paths, no little benches carved into the stone where harvesters took their lunches, no thatch-roofed huts where they could take shelter during storms.

No, these mountains were wild country. All morning, she had crept down tiny pebbled paths that wound between sheer black mountain walls and pulled herself up ledges and skidded down steep declines and edged along canyons with drops that ended in clouds.

Clouds, yes, but no storms. Not even a flash of lightning.

And all the while, as her chest burned and her bones ached, something had followed her.

Branches breaking. Shuffled footsteps stopping when she stopped.

Footsteps?

Paws?

She couldn’t tell.

And now she’d reached the top of a rocky rise. Beyond her stretched endless mountains ribboned with snow and dotted with stubby bright green trees. A mountain bird called out. A rock mouse chittered.

Then all sounds disappeared. Even the whistling wind disappeared. Brier and Mazby were alone in stillness.

“Can’t we please go home now?” Mazby looked around with wide eyes. “They’re close, whoever they are. If we run, maybe they won’t catch us!”

Brier clenched her fists. “I’m not going home until I find answers.”

“But there’s no one out here! No one except us, and...”

Andthem. The silent, stalkingthem.

“What kind of answers are you even hoping to find up here?” Mazby hovered before Brier’s face. “This was a terrible idea. I’m going to march you straight home and we’re going to find a healer.”

“Oh? You, a grifflet, are going to march me, a human girl, all the way home, are you?” Brier pushed past him. “You’re funny, Mazby.”

“You’ve left me no choice!” Mazby cried out, just before he flung himself onto Brier’s left shoulder, dug his claws into her coat, and yanked hard in the opposite direction.

Brier screamed.

Pain erupted in her shoulder and ripped through her body. She crashed to her knees, gulping down air, but her burned chest was on fire, and breathing was like throwing oil on it. Heat climbed up her throat and curled round her skull.

Mazby dropped to the ground, whimpering frantic apologies, but the roar of Brier’s blood pulsing through her body pushed away all sound and thought—except for the scrape ofsomething skidding down stone, and a nearby tumble of rocks.

Brier tried to look, but her vision swam and spooled, turning the colors of the world into useless swirls that reminded her, awfully, heart-pangingly, of Thorn’s paint.

“Going to show yourself now?” Brier called out. Her voice was in shreds. Tears gathered in her eyes because it hurt to speak, but she wasn’t about to let them fall. “Got tired of... following me?” She groped for Thorn’s fallen broom. “You’d better... run...”

She looked up just as a long white shape pulled Mazby out of the sky. A squawk, an indignant trilled cry. Feathers went flying. Brier, squinting, saw Mazby being thrown into a cloth sack.

She pushed herself up and swung the broom. “Let him go!” she cried, right before the world turned upside down. Her back slammed hard into the ground.

Watching the sky spin, Brier could not find her breath. The white shape that had grabbed Mazby stood over her.

It was a boy, so pale he seemed spun from silver clouds. His hair sat in a sloppy bun on his head, and his eyes snapped like jewels on fire.

“Got her!” he shouted, a mean grin on his face. Someone nearby whooped in triumph.

Then Brier’s world went black.

.20.

The Noose Narrows